


Not That I Don't Want To Help

by 51PegasiB



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Boundaries, Emotional Baggage, Gen, Passive-aggression, Therapy, friends are not psychiatrists, not that kind of doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 09:10:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7751749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/51PegasiB/pseuds/51PegasiB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Wilson and Bruce Banner are sick of winding up as de-facto therapists for teammates with epic issues. They decide to do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not That I Don't Want To Help

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to NienteZero for provoking this story and for encouraging me to post it.

The numbers weren't coming together. Bruce sighed and thumped his forehead. He squinted at the screen and tweaked the scale as if that would make the numbers come out differently. Of course it didn't.

"Fuck it," he said.

He minimized everything and stalked out of the lab, headed for the kitchen and its dizzying array of coffee makers.

He heard voices as he approached, creeping into the room so as not to disturb what sounded like a serious and intimate conversation. To his surprise, Sam jumped up from the kitchen table as he came in, leaving Steve hanging mid-sentence.

"Bruce, my man! Getting coffee? I want some, too," said Sam. He grinned and clapped an arm around Bruce's shoulders and steered him towards the door. "Why don't we go out for some. I know a great place." He pointed back at Steve "Talk later, Steve."

Sam's bravado collapsed as soon as he had steered them into the elevator. His face and body went slack and he sagged against the wall of the elevator. "Sorry about that, man. We don't have to go anywhere. I just needed out of that conversation."

"I wouldn't mind a break, actually," Bruce admitted.

They rode in silence down the skyscraper's many floors.

"So where's this place you know?" asked Bruce when they hit the lobby.

"I was totally bullshitting about that. Only place I know is Starbucks," he said.

"Well, come with me. I think I can do you one better," said Bruce.

He and Sam walked the few blocks to Bruce's favorite little cafe. They got coffees and sat down. Bruce sipped his and felt the tension go out of him. He leaned back and sighed. "So..." he said.

"So," Sam replied.

"Want to tell me why we fled?" Bruce asked.

Sam groaned and sank further into his chair, hunched around his latte like it was the only source of warmth for miles. "It's just...."

Bruce silently sipped his decaf again, waiting for the sentence to land.

"It's not that I mind talking to friends about their problems," said Sam. "God knows I got enough of my own and *I* appreciate a friend's support."

Bruce nodded.

"But when it gets heavy...when it gets to be...a lot and there's no end in sight...man, I support folks with PTSD and trauma all day. And then I get home..."

"And you want to do something else. Like anything else," Bruce chimed in.

"Hell yeah, man," Sam agreed.

"I know what you mean. Some moods Tony gets in....it's not that I don't owe him. I know that I do. But I am not that kind of doctor. And god knows I have enough brain management of my own to do."

"No shit, right? It's not like the superhero plus a day job thing is easy," Sam was taking big swigs of his drink now, leaning forward over the table, eager agreement giving him new energy.

"But how can you tell someone - a friend - to go and talk to a professional if they're having that much trouble?" Asked Bruce.

"And they deserve someone to take care of them.  
They're off taking care of the world. But I ain't got it in me. And it's not stopping," said Sam.

"It's kind of getting worse," Bruce muttered.

Sam sighed and nodded.

There was a long moment where both of them sat, contemplating their coffees.

"So what do we do?" Sam asked.

Bruce thought about it. He looked to the ceiling and then a slow grin spread over his face. He looked at Sam. "I have an idea."

* * *

"Hey, Tony, I really need your help," said Sam, bursting into Tony's lab.

"Sure thing. Anything for you, swoopy bird!" Tony said, pointing at Sam with a screwdriver. "What do you need?"

"Can you grab a toolbox and come with me?" Sam asked.

"What's the problem?" Tony asked, already moving. "Knowing that will help me pack."

"Please? It's important," said Sam. He was moving foot to foot and had one foot out the door.

"Okay. Urgent. I get it." Tony grabbed a large metal box and followed Sam out of the workshop. He was confused when they got in the car, but Sam successfully distracted him with questions about his wings till they were in a residential area up above East 116th street.

"What the hell, Sam? Where are we going?" Tony demanded.

"My nana's house, man. She needs some help." Sam pulled over and parked and jumped out of the car.

Tony gave him a look of confusion before following him onto the stoop of a dilapidated brownstone. Sam knocked and they were met at the door by a tall black lady with a cloud of white curly hair, glasses on a chain and and a wide smile for Sam.

"Come here, baby. Let me look at you," she said, sweeping him into a hug. "You need to come see me more often, boy. You only in midtown. It ain't that far."

Tony was standing perplexedly by before the woman turned the full force of her attention on him.

"And you. Haven't you boys got anybody feeding you in that fancy building?" she demanded. "You come on in and I'm gonna take care of you." She ushered Tony in before he could even get a word in edgeways.

"Uh, I'm not really hungry...Mrs. Wi...uh Ma'am," Tony said as she sat them down at a kitchen table on a sagging floor at the back of the house.

"You just call me Nana Bess, same as everyone," she told Tony. "And don't give me that. When this one comes by with Steve they can polish off a whole chicken and all the trimmings. I know you boys don't eat enough. Look at you. Like whips." She clucked and shook her head as she bustled around, putting things on plates.

Tony took advantage of her momentary distraction to his at Sam across the table. "What the hell, Wilson? What is this?"

Sam just grinned like the cat who ate the canary and thanked his grandmother for the piled-high sandwiches put in front of each of them.

Tony eyed his. It did look really good. He cautiously picked up one half of his (she had cut them into triangles) and took a bite. It was amazing.

"I told Tony you need some help, Nana," said Sam, while Tony's mouth was full. "What is it we should look at?"

"Well, now I don't like to complain," she said. "But if you boys are here anyway..." She went to pull a pad of paper out of a drawer with a list that took up two pages.

"I used to just make due," she said. "Like with the light flickering all the time on the landing. But it gets to me now, I get headaches...bad ones. Makes it so I can't go to work."

"Nana is the best social worker in Harlem," said Sam.

"You hush, boy. I just do what I can, same as everybody else," said Nana Bess.

Tony took the pad while still munching on his sandwich. There was a long list of issues - dangerously broken stairs, loose banisters, a window that wouldn't close all the way, electrical issues, plumbing issues. Honestly, the house seemed like a death-trap, so he could understand why Sam would say this woman needed help, but not why Sam would just drag him out here like this when the house had clearly been slowly collapsing for years. He eyed Sam over the rim of the iced teas his grandmother had just given each of them, fixing him with a look of deep suspicion.

"Now how is that sandwich. Is it fixing you? Can I get you two boys anything else?"

"Uh, no Ma'am," said Tony. "It looks like I've got a lot of work to do."

Sam's grin got wider as Tony picked up his toolbox and Sam showed him out of the kitchen to take him through the list.

Nana Bess supervised them for a while, then drifted off to do some work, picking away at an ancient keyboard at an ancient desktop computer in her office while they kept working.

"What the hell, Sam? said Tony as he installed a new washer in the bathroom sink's faucet and tightened the bolts on the handle, then tried starting and stopping the flow of water. "Why are we even here. You know I could've paid a team of workmen to come out and take care of this. They'd probably be doing better than I am, too."

"Are you saying you can't do it?" Sam asked him, lazily amused and crouching by the toolbox, waiting for Tony to request another tool.

"Of course not. I mean. I resent that. I can do advanced circuitry and pneumatic robots. This is just plumbing for christ's sake. It's not even complicated plumbing. I'm saying, this isn't what I do...and the parts that are what I do, I mean...why does she even stay in this wreck of a place?" Tony asked. "I know what you make. You could buy her something nicer yourself. Let alone with all her grandchildren chipping in." There had been photos everywhere. Nana Bess was quite the matriarch.

"You think we haven't tried to get her to move? She's lived on this street all her life and she's lived in this house since she was married. She owns it outright. Gramps paid it off before he passed on. Back in the sixties, houses were cheaper, here. Now with the taxes on the house's current value, and with Gramps being gone, Nana can barely afford to keep it up. But she won't take our money. She always tells us to go give the money to someone who hasn't got a roof over their heads or food to eat. She says she's got both, so she doesn't need it."

"She won't have a roof for long, if this place keeps going the way it is."

"I know," said Sam, looking grim for the first time since they'd gotten there. "We do what we can, but we don't really know what we're doing. We needed someone who does."

"So you went and got the world's best engineer to come fix the loose shale on your Nana's roof."

"Are you really the *best*? I mean...Reed Richards? Hank Pym? Victor Von Doom?"

"Oh how DARE you Wilson? I am the best. Anyway, no one wants Victor Von Doom knowing where their grandmother lives."

"Anyway you haven't fixed the roof," said Sam.

"I can't. I need supplies I haven't got," said Tony, though he was loathe to admit it. "I could've if you had told me what was going on and I could've actually *planned*." He looked under the bathroom sink to see if he could fix the drainage issue. He laid down and shone a flashlight on the plumbing, gazing up into its arcane twists.

"If I had done that, would you even have come?" Sam asked.

Tony thought about that. "I would've sent someone," he said.

"Yeah. You're really nice about stuff like that," said Sam, quietly. "This was really important to me, though."

"Well..." Tony twisted a bolt off and narrowly avoided getting a face-full of sink-crud. "Ahhh. Gah. Gross." He cleaned that up and poked around in the trap to see if anything else was lingering in the drain. "I won't be able to finish, today. I'll have to come back."

"Okay," said Sam.

"I mean, it was a long list. Honestly, the floor of the first floor should be on it, too."

"Okay."

There was a long pause while Tony extricated himself from the cupboard underneath the sink and moved on to the shower.

"Look. I do actually like helping people. You know that, right?"

"I didn't actually," said Sam. "But it's good to know."

Tony nodded. "You don't have to trick me into it. Just...let me know it's important. Contrary to popular belief, that is something I can understand."

Sam's face grew serious. "All right man. Thank you."

Tony nodded and went back to re-securing the shower head in the wall.

* * *

Nana Bess had insisted on feeding them a full dinner before they left. She was profusely thankful and clucked over them in a maternal manner that Tony was really starting to enjoy, though he'd never admit that to Sam.

When they got back to the tower, they found Natasha, Bruce, Clint and Steve all sprawled over the living room.

"What the hell happened to you guys?" Tony asked, putting his toolbox down by the door and moving to get a beer - the one thing Nana Bess had not had to offer them.

"We helped someone move," moaned Clint.

"Yeah. Their entire house," said Natasha. "They weren't even completely packed, yet."

"Sounds like you guys had a long day," said Sam and looked significantly at Bruce, who Tony noticed winking back at Sam.

"who'd you help move?" Tony asked.

"Bruce's ex and her fiancee," said Steve, his voice muffled by his own arm thrown over his face.

"What the hell? Why?" asked Tony. "Isn't one of the advantages of breaking up with someone that you don't have to help them move anymore?"

"I didn't exactly break up with her," said Bruce. "The green guy just kind of made things...impossible."

"Oh. Shit. Sorry," said Tony.

"Anyway, I'm glad she's found someone stable," said Bruce.

"Why'd she have to move?" Tony asked.

"Her father found her," Bruce replied, shortly.

There was a whole lot of family drama loaded into those four words. Tony took a long pull of his beer. "Ahh," he said. "Her new guy more stable than her dad, too?"

"Much," said Bruce. "In fact, I think everyone should meet him."

"Me too," said Sam.

"What? Why?" said Tony. "I already know stable people."

"First of all, no you don't," said Bruce. "Secondly, you're not going to meet him because he's stable. You're going to meet him because he's a psychiatrist."

"I'm what now?" Tony asked.

"No shrinks!" declared Clint from his patch of floor.

"Oh, yes shrinks." Sam poked him with his foot.

"Sam and I aren't playing brain doctor for this group anymore," said Bruce. "We care about you. We want you taken care of, but it's too much."

Everyone was quiet, taking that in.

"Leonard is professional, he has excellent credentials, his old patients loved him and his fiancee's situation has left him out of a job and also with some really excellent reasons to be discreet," Bruce went on.

The silence lingered.

"Wait. Was today supposed to be some kind of lesson?" Tony snapped.

Sam looked at him innocently. "What do you mean?"

Natasha sat up and gave the two of them an evil look. "You brought us all to do jobs that professionals could do better and exhausted us because you're exhausted."

"Actually," said Sam and paused, looking at Bruce, who waved for him to continue. "We asked for your help doing jobs that are REALLY IMPORTANT and that REALLY NEEDED DOING but for which you were maybe not the best suited people."

Bruce nodded. "And which maybe took up time you had that might have been better spent elsewhere."

"Like inventing the solar jet-car," said Sam to Tony.

"Or running world-saving stealth missions," said Bruce to the rest of them.

"Okay. We get it," groaned Clint. "No more talking about shit."

"Nope. That's not the point," said Sam.

"We just want to be your friends and teammates, not your mental health professionals," said Bruce.

"That's the point," said Sam, gesturing at Bruce. "Okay, who wants another beer?" He asked, deftly changing the subject. All hands but Bruce's shot up. Sam pulled some from the kitchen and passed them out.

He came and sat down by Tony.

Tony chewed on his own lip before taking a swig of his second beer. "You know, I figure I can get a zoning variance to put an elevator on the back of Nana Bess's house," he said.

"Tony. You don't have to finish the repairs, let alone do something like that. You're right, we'll get someone in to do it."

"No...I mean- you said it yourself. She won't leave. Might as well set it up so she can stay in that house as long as she wants," said Tony.

"You never do anything by halves, do you?" Sam asked him holding out his beer bottle in Tony's direction.

"Hell none of us do," said Tony, clinking their bottles together.

 


End file.
